November 29, 2007

The Other 1937 Snow White

Ouch. You've gotta feel for the budding children's book artist who introduces her meticulously translated, true-to-Grimm, three-color labor of love retelling of Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs in 1937, the year Walt Disney revolutionized cinema with his own version.

As you can imagine, Wanda Gag's Snow White did not become a perennial classic; it went out of print, and only came back recently, as part of the University of Minnesota Press's Heritage Books series.

We're always on the lookout for interesting non-Disney variations on these classic stories, just to enrich the kid's mix. Gag went on to a prolific illustrating career, so this early work of hers sounds worth a try.